“He lives in Detroit,” Token says, reading a paper he’s pulled from the folder, the sunlight streaming through the window onto his patch of couch, washing out his features so that Francie can’t read his expression.
“Yeah,” Colette says. “He flew into New York on the third of July. Had a flight back on the fifth, but he didn’t board. They don’t know where he is.”
“What do you mean they don’t know where he is?” Francie asks.
“I mean, the police can’t find him. He’s disappeared.”
“Jesus,” Nell says.
“Do they think he’s holding Midas for ransom?” Francie asks. “Actresses probably deal with this stuff all the time. But Lowell told me that if this were about ransom, they would have asked for it by now.” She’s still convinced Lowell could be wrong. After all, Lowell’s uncle—and his one source on law enforcement—is a sheriff back home in Estherville. What would he know about a case this big, with a once-famous actress, a multimillionaire, the daughter of a well-connected developer?
“There’s no mention of ransom. At least not in this file.”
“You see he’s originally from Yemen?” Nell asks.
“Yeah, but he’s been here for twelve years,” Colette says. “I searched him online. There’s not much. He has a Facebook page, but it’s private, and everything’s written in Arabic. I did find someone with that name who is a mechanic for a company near Detroit that rents out private jets to rich clients. That’s got to be him.”
Airplanes? “He has access to airplanes?” Francie says.
Poppy cries from somewhere down the hall. “I called Winnie again,” Colette says, standing up. “It’s the third time. She’s not responding.”
Nell rubs her eyes. “And the scene around her apartment, with the cameras and journalists. It’s out of hand. Some asshole tried to stop me when I walked by on the way here, asked if I live nearby, if I have a comment.”
More than a few of Winnie’s neighbors have already given interviews, asked what they know about her, if they’d noticed anything suspicious that night. It sickens Francie how many people are willing to chime in, to say whatever it takes to see their names in print: that Winnie seems quiet, a little aloof. That they’ve never seen her with a man. That they’ve been curious, they have to admit, who “the father” is.
Token stands, pacing slowly to the window, peering across the street into the park. “They’re going to turn this into a fucking circus,” he says. “You can feel it.”
Colette walks down the hall toward Poppy’s cries, and Francie continues to study the contents of the folder, scanning Mark Hoyt’s notes. She doesn’t want to say anything, but she’s also been by Winnie’s building a few times in the past three days, in the evenings, after the journalists have left. Will grows so fussy around seven each night, before Lowell is home to help. It’s hard to be in the apartment when he’s crying like that, trapped with the heat. She’s been taking him for a walk up the hill.
She often takes a seat on the bench across the street from Winnie’s building. It’s been dark inside her house. But last night, as the sky grew dim with nightfall and the mosquitos buzzed in her hair, she pressed Will hard against her chest, whispering in his ear, pleading for some quiet, sure she saw someone moving inside.
Chapter Eight
Day Four
To: May Mothers
From: Your friends at The Village
Date: July 8
Subject: Today’s advice
Your baby: Day 55
Think your partner’s smile is heart-melting? Just wait. A baby’s first smile arrives at about the same time in all cultures, so if it hasn’t happened yet, prepare to be rewarded for all your loving care with a beaming, toothless, just-for-you smile. This will probably make you leap with joy (even if you’ve just had your worst night ever).
Nell browses the rack of dresses that hang like boneless bodies from the thin steel pole. She checks her watch—she still has another two hours before she can pick up Beatrice from the day care. A young woman approaches, a cherry smile painted above astonishingly white teeth. “You want me to start a room?” She wears a black fabric rose pinned in her blond curls, and a shirt so short it reveals the sharp edges of her rib cage.
“No, I’m ready now,” Nell says, following her to the back of the store, to a small dressing room separated from the racks of clothes by the same thin floral curtain Nell has considered buying at IKEA.
“Let me know if you need another size,” the girl says, sliding the curtain closed. Nell takes off her shorts and shirt, tears building for the third time this morning. She can’t believe she has to return to work tomorrow, leaving Beatrice in the care of strangers for nine hours a day. She had to beg Sebastian to be the one to call Alma and tell her they’d decided it would be better, at least for right now, to put Beatrice into day care. Alma was a wreck. Nell listened at Sebastian’s ear as Alma said how sorry she was, how she hasn’t been able to sleep, how the journalists keep calling and showing up at her apartment, that she’s been questioned three times already by the police.
“They’re asking me everything, again and again. What did I see? What did I hear? How was the mother acting? The priest is here. I’m praying for forgiveness.”
Nell tries to close the gap between the curtain and the wall before pulling on a pair of pants. Two sizes up from what she wore before getting pregnant, and she can’t get them over her thighs. The blouse she tries next is no better. It cuts off circulation in her arms, and is too tight across her breasts. Sweat slicks her lower back as she pulls a formless black shift dress over her head. She’s annoyed to see there’s no mirror in the dressing room, and she quietly opens the curtain, locating the floor-length mirror near the sale rack. Within seconds, the girl is on her.
“That looks nice.” Nell doesn’t respond, hoping her silence will compel the girl back to the front of the store, but instead she tilts her head to the side, her small-bird features creased in thought as she chews her bottom lip. “Know what this dress needs?”
“A sixty-percent markdown?”
The girl laughs. “A statement necklace. Something to bring attention up, toward your neck. Away from the things you want to hide.”
“What if the thing I want to hide is my neck?”
The girl holds up a finger and turns on the chunky heel of her ankle boot. “Let me see what we have.”
Nell returns to the dressing room anxious and frustrated—about the girl, about how bad she looks in the dress—questioning why she’s felt so unsettled since seeing those photos of Bodhi Mogaro yesterday afternoon. She discards the dress in a heap with the other clothes before fleeing first the dressing room and then the store, the jingle of the bell reverberating behind her. She snakes through the people on the sidewalk, unsure of where she’s going, past the other boutiques she’d planned to visit for work clothes, for something that will actually fit her body now, fourteen pounds heavier. But she can’t deal. Not today. Not with another store. Another dress. Another size-two sales clerk, smelling of hair products and cinnamon gum.
Was it him?
Was Bodhi Mogaro at the bar that night?
She can’t get the questions out of her mind.
Is he the one who ripped her shirt? Is it him that she sees when she closes her eyes, the blurry figure behind her in the bathroom, a pair of hands on her shoulders?
Did he follow her, fight her for Winnie’s key, all without her remembering it?
No.